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"What the American Founding Fathers understood was that institutions were built for human imperfection, not human perfection," Condoleezza Rice says. Ariel Zambelich/NPR hide caption

"What the American Founding Fathers understood was that institutions were built for human imperfection, not human perfection," Condoleezza Rice says.

This is part of a series of conversations on Morning Edition with politicians, writers, scientists, theologians, tech innovators and others. We're asking, "How did we get here and where are we headed?" Out of those answers, we'll help capture this moment and how we're shaped by it, as individuals, nations and as a global civilization.

Condoleezza Rice's new book, Democracy: Stories from the Long Road to Freedom, is a full-throated endorsement of overseas engagement and democracy building. It comes at a time of widespread distrust of government and institutions.

Rice's "through line" is that institutions provide the bedrock for any successful democracy. Though institutions are built by people, she tells NPR's Rachel Martin, no country can rely on a single personality to carry it forward. The Founding Fathers knew this, she says, so they constrained the executive by embedding it in a balance with other institutions.

"What the American Founding Fathers understood was that institutions were built for human imperfection, not human perfection," she says.

Rice, former national security adviser and secretary of state under President George W. Bush, also addresses the anti-immigrant, anti-trade sentiments that have surged across the U.S. and Europe. She's worried about current widespread feelings of populism, nativism, protectionism and isolationism which she calls the "four horsemen of the apocalypse."

"I'm concerned that the current moment might take us back to those four horsemen of the apocalypse and it didn't work out so well the last time around," she says.

On her concerns about populism, nativism, protectionism and isolationism

We have to recognize that the reason that the global order that we've enjoyed and almost take for granted over the last several years exists is that after World War II, the United States and its allies tried to build an antidote to what they had seen between World War I and World War II. There they'd seen protectionism, beggar-thy-neighbor trading policies. So they said we'll build an open international economy. And they did that.

They had seen fear of the other, a willingness to be harsh on people just because they were different, and they had seen that authoritarian states were violent states. And so they thought we'll support democratic peoples. And so this system, built on free markets, free trade and free peoples, and American protection, that's what got us from the end of World War II to the extraordinary events of the end of the Cold War and a system that was one of prosperity and peace for a lot of people including for the United States.

On Iraq today, a country she calls a "quasi-democracy"

It has a legislature that tries to function. It has a prime minister who is accountable. They've decided to get rid of a couple of them. But they stepped down. Arab strongmen don't normally step down. They have a very free and functioning press. But it's got a long way to go to be a consolidated democracy where the institutions fully function and can carry out what they are intended to do. But it's not an authoritarian state any longer, and it's not a totalitarian state in the way that it was under Saddam Hussein. It's very different to be Iraqi today than to be Syrian.

If I can get one point across, it's that Iraq and Afghanistan are not the primary examples of democracy promotion. We went to Iraq because we had a security problem with Saddam Hussein. Turns out it wasn't a security problem that was as imminent as we thought because of the weapons of mass destruction. With Afghanistan, we needed to get rid of the safe haven for al-Qaida after 9/11. Once we had overthrown their dictators, we had to have a view about what came after, and we believed that we would be better off to help launch them on the road to democracy. But I would never have said to President Bush "overthrow Saddam Hussein to bring democracy to Iraq," because democratic openings that come about in that way the overthrow of a totalitarian government by external powers it makes it really hard to make those first steps toward democracy.

On whether she's concerned that President Trump has had glowing things to say about leaders of Russia, Turkey and Egypt countries she writes "discourage us" with respect to democracies' global trajectory

Well, with [Russian President] Vladimir Putin I think we're starting to see that whatever was said in the campaign about Vladimir Putin, we're very clearly coming up against what American interests are in dealing with Russia. I thought [Secretary of State] Rex Tillerson had a great line when he said in regards to the [Syrian] chemical weapons deal that the Russians had sponsored that they were either incompetent or they weren't telling the truth. I'm not sure I would have been brave enough to say that but it was exactly [the] right thing to say to them. So the U.S.-Russian relationship is exactly where it should be. It recognizes all the difficulties and it recognizes who Vladimir Putin is. When it comes to Turkey or to Egypt, this is hard because they are allies. And so for an American president or secretary of state, the challenge is always to find a way to continue those relationships and promote those relationships recognizing the flaws and the foibles of those allies.

I would hope this and it goes to whether it's [Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-]Sissi or [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan or [Philippine President Rodrigo] Duterte, if he indeed comes it's fine you have to talk to these people. But you can also say to them what you're doing is unacceptable and it's unacceptable for moral reasons, but I'm going to tell you it's also unacceptable because eventually it is going to bring you down.

On how Rex Tillerson's mission for the State Department to advance America's national security and economic interests with no mention of spreading democracy is very different from then-President George W. Bush's

Exact formulations matter here. So American national security and American economic interests, of course. Every president, every secretary of state, that is the primary goal. As you are in this job and in the work, you begin to see though that in the long run, both American economic interests and American national security are better served when there are other decent countries in the world who are both your allies and even when your adversaries are acting more decently. Because ultimately we didn't go to Germany to create a democracy. We went to overthrow Adolf Hitler. But once a democracy was there, Germany was a much bigger supporter of and helped to our national interest both economic and security than ever had ever been before.

On whether she craves from the Trump administration a more overt endorsement of values like democracy, freedom and liberty

I am going to answer that question for you at a later date, because it's early. I have heard expressions of why NATO matters that I didn't hear in the campaign. And NATO is, by the way, built on security, but it's also built on values. I've heard expressions about why the United States of America cannot stand by and let Syrian children be gassed by their leaders. That wouldn't have been the language of the campaign. So I'm hearing echoes of many of these values. And I believe you're going to hear more. I hope we hear more.

I think we're still a bright, shining city on the hill, not because we're perfect but because we struggle in our imperfections every day. When I was standing in the Ben Franklin Room about to be sworn in as secretary of state by the way by a Jewish woman justice, Justice Ginsburg with Ben Franklin looking over us, I couldn't help but think that this was a Constitution to which I was about to take an oath of allegiance that it once counted my ancestors three-fifths of a man, a Constitution that had to be referred to by Martin Luther King to say that America shouldn't be something else, just had to be what it said it was. That's a pretty powerful story of evolution. Human beings are not perfect. Their institutions are not perfect, but they have to keep trying. And America has to help people keep trying.

Morning Edition editor Martha Wexler and Web producer Heidi Glenn contributed to this report. It was produced for broadcast by radio producer Noor Wazwaz.

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Rice Endorses Overseas Engagement And Democracy Building - NPR

Candidate Donald Trump made a campaign stop in February 2016 hosted by South Carolinas Broad River Electric Cooperative. After taking the auditorium stage, observing that its a lot of people, and joining the audience in a chant of his surname, Trump began by asking, Do we love electricity, by the way, all you electricity people? He went on: How about life without electricity? Not so good, right? Not so good. He then changed the subject. 1

Trump appeared to have been briefed on the origin story of electric co-ops, which goes something like this: By the onset of the Great Depression, few people in the rural United States had electricity at homeabout 10 percent. The power companies that had lit up the cities simply didnt see enough profit in serving far-flung farmers. But gradually some of those farmers started forming electric cooperativesutility companies owned and governed by their customersand strung up their own lines. Many bought cheap power from dams on federal land. Their ingenuity became a progressive New Deal program, which Franklin Roosevelt initiated in 1935 and Congress funded the following year. The Department of Agriculture began dispensing low-interest loans across the country. Farmers set up their own power lines and co-ops, even as corporate competitors tried to undermine them, building stray spite lines through their prospective territories. But the cooperators prevailed. They switched on their own lights.2

A government guide for members of rural electrification cooperatives, 1939.

We typically think of our democratic institutions as having to do with politicians and governments. But there are democratic businesses, toonot just these electric co-ops, but also hulking credit unions, mutual-insurance companies, and ubiquitous cooperative brands from Land OLakes to the Associated Press. Their democracy is fragile. When its not exercised or noticed, these creatures act on their own volition.3

People, like Trump, who are used to paying their utility bills in cities tend not to know that 75 percent of the countrys landmass gets its electricity from such cooperatives. That amounts to about 42 million member-owners, 11 percent of the total electricity sold, and $164 billion in assets, serving 93 percent of the persistent-poverty counties in the country. Local co-ops band together to form larger co-ops of co-opspower suppliers that run power plants, cooperatively owned mining operations, and democratic banks that finance new projects. Population growth and sprawl have brought wealthy suburbs to many of these once-rural territories. Its a scale of cooperative enterprise unheard of for those who associate co-op with grocery stores, community gardens, and apartment buildings. Its also a neglected democracyneglected by member-owners of the co-ops, who often dont know that theyre anything more than customers, and by a society that forgets what cooperative economic development have achieved. 4

Territory served by energy co-ops, shown in green. (Americas Electric Cooperatives)

Republican presidents like Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon regarded the electric cooperatives as creeping communism, while Democratic presidents tended to benefit from the sectors support. Lyndon Johnson helped set up the co-op that served his ranch, and Jimmy Carters father had been on the board of the co-op that served his area. But the progressive base retreated to urban centers. Bill Clinton singled out the co-ops for cuts. More recently, between 2010 and 16, the political contributions by the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) flipped from 50/50 between the two parties to 72 percent Republican. Vice President Mike Pence has had long-standing ties with Indianas electric co-ops. And the co-ops, this remnant of rural progressivism, helped deliver the Electoral College and Congress to him and President Trump. 5

Among those celebrating after the 2016 election was Jim Matheson, a former Democratic congressman from Utah who now serves as the associations CEO. Rural Americas voice was heard in this election, and it will be a powerful voice moving forward, he was quoted as saying in a press release published on November 14. A spike in rural, right-leaning voter turnout coincided with his organizations Co-ops Vote campaign, which mobilized member-owners in a subset of the countrys 838 local electric cooperatives. Whats more, the next president would be the candidate who had promised to scrap his predecessors Clean Power Plan, fulfilling a chief policy priority of the NRECA under Matheson. Subsequent press releases praised Trumps climate-denialist, regulation-smashing cabinet appointees.6

The administrations initial America First budget draft, however, proposed slashing a batch of rural programs, including the Department of Agricultures Rural Cooperative Development Grants. When the draft came out in March, Matheson attempted to reassure his members. This is only the first step in the budget process, he said in a statement. Days later, at least, Matheson had the opportunity to celebrate an executive order meant to doom the Clean Power Plan. 7

The co-ops are a remnant of rural progressive movements, and they helped deliver the Electoral College to Trump.

Electric cooperatives are conservative institutions, carrying out the business of reliability while balancing their members interests with formidable inertia. But theyre also poised to lead a radical shift to a more renewable distributed-energy grid. They can be fiefdoms for long-entrenched establishments, but theyre also bastions of bottom-up, local self-governance. They tend to be far less regulated by states than investor-owned utilities, on the rationale that their member-owners do their own regulation. This is a chunk of the US energy system that depends not just on the whims of investors or on the promises of presidents, but on the readiness of the people who use it to organize.8

Jim Heneghan is the renewable-energy engineer at the Delta-Montrose Electric Association, a co-op on the western end of Colorado. I followed him as he checked out a company pickup truck from the DMEAs headquarters, a complex that includes one of the cooperatives two 10-kilowatt solar farms. From there he drove me through the dusty landscape to the co-ops first two hydroelectric plants along South Canal, a waterway piped in from the mountains. They opened in 2013 and operate mostly without human intervention, but Heneghan checks in on them personally when he can. I like to start the plant manually, he told me in one of the control rooms. A small man of terrific posture, he made his way among the towering, whirring machines like a librarian among shelves of rare books.9

Soaking up the sun: Through the use of solar panels, Jim Heneghan is moving his co-op toward sustainable energy. (Nathan Schneider)

The first two plants proved the promise of the business model. Soon, other developers wanted to build plants along South Canal and sell the power to the local co-op, too. By 2015, the model was the subject of a federal regulatory dispute. The DMEA had begun bucking the co-op inertia.10

Like most electric distribution co-ops, the DMEA is an owner-member of a larger co-op. These are called generation and transmission co-ops, or G&Ts, and they run big power plants that smaller, local co-ops cannot afford to manage themselves. The contract the DMEA has with its G&T, Tri-State, specifies that Tri-State must provide at least 95 percent of the energy the DMEA sells. This has long been a practical economic arrangement, but one with dirty consequences: Federal policy dating to the 1970s ensured that much of the G&Ts investment went into coal plants. But the DMEA has been finding opportunities to generate more of its power locally, from ever-cheaper solar panels and hydro dams to the methane leaking from the areas retired mines. The member-elected board liked these opportunities, for reasons of cost, jobs, and the environment. The DMEA relied on Tri-State for most of its power, but its contract was getting in the way of adopting greener energy sources that could bring needed jobs for members.11

Part of the culture here in this area is the desire to keep things local, says Virginia Harman, vice president of member relations and human resources at the co-op.12

We are experiencing a phenomenally exciting technological revolution.Christopher McLean

When the DMEA hired Jasen Bronec as CEO from a Montana co-op in 2014, he brought with him a new strategy; a half-smile sneaks into Bronecs all-business demeanor when he talks about it. The co-op filed a request with the Federal Regulatory Commission, inquiring about whether a Carter-era law enabled the DMEA to source its own local energy if a more affordable, renewable option were to compete with a standing contract. In June 2015, the FERC ruled that the DMEA was in fact required to do so. Tri-State objected, but the ruling has so far held.13

Heneghan lives on a farm so out of the way that its off even the DMEA grid. He produces his own power there. Im confident that we wont keep the central-generation model, he said, as we drove on the narrow dirt roads between dams. There are so many things that point to a structural change in the electrical industry. He compared the change to what cellular did to telephones. He daydreamed about testing one of the new Tesla Powerwall batteries and reveled in the ongoing convergence of moral, environmental, technological, and economic imperativesif only we allow ourselves to embrace them.14

Heneghan believes that co-ops are uniquely positioned to benefit. Their lean, local, customer-centered kind of business has already made them pioneers in easy, low-risk financing for energy-efficiency improvements and renewables. In 2016, about a quarter of the power delivered to Tri-States members came from renewables, and the G&T announced the closure of two coal stations that were no longer economical; according to the NRECA, the co-op sectors solar capacity is set to double over the course of 2017. Co-ops not locked into G&T contracts have been especially ambitious in switching to renewables. The DMEA is also one of the co-ops across the country that have begun bringing broadband Internet to underserved rural communitiesa development that parallels the circumstances that gave rise to electric co-ops in the first place. Abroad, especially in Denmark and Germany, cooperative ownership has proven useful for scaling solar and wind facilities.15

We are experiencing a phenomenally exciting technological revolution, says Christopher McLean, who oversees electric programs at the Department of Agricultures Rural Utilities Service, the federal agency that still provides low-interest loans to co-opstoday, a $5.5 billion, revenue-positive fund. Used to be, the electric program was kind of like the boring program, but now we get all the exciting stuff.16

McLean wouldnt comment about policy, but Heneghan did. I dont see enough in the Trump administration to change what we saw as the trends from a year ago or two years ago, he told me. Change is here, its permanent, and its up to utilities to figure out how to best manage it.17

Local co-ops are primarily owned by dead people.Congressman Jim Cooper of Tennessee

This kind of talk overlooks the fact that electric co-ops still lag behind the national average in their use of renewables. The local co-ops are bound to their decades-long G&T contracts, and the G&Ts say they cant walk away from their past investments in coal anytime soon. On the record and off, co-op executives talk a lot about their commitment to member-owners and to the seven international co-op principles that hang on their boardroom walls. Heneghan was careful to justify his every ambition in terms of a cost-benefit calculus for members. But co-op staffs know as well as anyone that their democracy is in some respects nominalan opportunity, but by no means a guarantee. 18

As I concluded my visit to the DMEAs headquarters, I met a woman on the way out the door who had come to pay her bill. Photos of board members hung on the wall next to us. I asked if she liked being a member of the co-op, and she looked at me like I was speaking the wrong language. I asked the question again but said customer instead. She smiled and said shed been getting power from the DMEA for 20 years and loved itgreat service, super-reliable. Shed grown up in Hawaii with no electricity, so she appreciated being able to turn the lights on when she came home.19

Five times during the fall of 2016, Della Brown-Davis and her 12-year-old daughter made the two-and-a-half-hour drive, each way, from their home in Tylertown, Mississippi, to Jackson. Their purpose was to learn about electric cooperatives. Brown-Davis is a schoolteacher and therapist, as well as a member-owner of the Magnolia Electric Power Association, one of the nine co-ops that have fallen under the scrutiny of One Voice, an affiliate of the states NAACP. Before it could make any headway, One Voice had to teach co-op members what it means to be cooperators.20

Brown-Davis and her daughter became acquainted with the lofty cooperative principles shared by co-ops around the world. They learned how to read the 990 tax forms that the electric co-ops nonprofit status requires they make public. And they saw evidence that their fellow African-American co-op members across Mississippi were not getting their dueexorbitant bills, all-white boards in black-majority districts, opaque governance procedures that prevented participation. Brown-Davis noticed a picture of white high-school students representing her co-op on a trip to Washington, DC. On the drives home from Jackson, she and her daughter would discuss what theyd learned.21

Its disappointing to find that, in this day and age, so many things are occurring the way they did back in the 50s and the 60s, Brown-Davis says.22

In 2014, Benita Wells, One Voices chief financial officer, helped out on a review of co-ops by the state Public Service Commission. It was her first exposure to the distinct mechanics of cooperative accounting, but she knew enough to notice incongruities. Executives were getting inflated salaries, together with board members who had been on the payroll for decades. Co-ops werent returning millions of dollars in accumulated equity to the members, to the point of risking their privileges as nonprofits. None of the numbers added up, she says. Making her task harder, co-ops have few disclosure requirements, and they frequently resist sharing financials even with their members.23

One Voice invited researchers from MIT and Cornell to investigate. They conducted listening tours, scrutinized utility bills across the states Black Belt, and used what they learned to help develop the Electric Cooperative Leadership Institute. Brown-Davis was part of the institutes first cohort, among other co-op customers ready to organize their neighbors. But the first day, many werent yet aware of their status as co-owners.24

Mississippi is unusually dense with electric cooperatives. Nearly half of residents get their power from one. And although 37 percent of Mississippians are African-American, One Voice found they accounted for just 6.6 percent of co-op board seats. Women held only 4 percent. In the largely poor districts the campaign identified, residents frequently spent over 40 percent of their income on electricity.25

According to Derrick Johnson, the president of One Voice and the state NAACP, Our ultimate goal is to help them understand how to develop a strategy to maximize members participation. Then, he hopes, they can begin to think about renewable energy differently.26

There does appear to be some correlation between member participation and energy innovation. The Roanoke Electric Cooperative in North Carolina, for instance, underwent a black-led member-organizing campaign in the 1960s; its current CEO, Curtis Wynn, is vice president of the NRECA board and its soleAfrican American. Roanoke has meanwhile become the first co-op in the state to adopt financing for members to make energy-efficiency improvements. It also allows members to buy in on a community solar array and is developing a broadband Internet program.27

When the makeup of your management staff or your board of directors isnt fully reflecting the makeup of your communities, Wynn told me, there could easily be a disconnect between what the constituents want and need, and what decisions the board and the management team will make. Without member pressure, for instance, managers often have an incentive to sell more power rather than helping members reduce their consumption, their costs, and their carbon footprints. 28

The successful organizing at Roanoke is more the exception than the rule. During the 1980s and 90s, the Southern Regional Council mounted the Co-op Democracy and Development Project, a series of campaigns in co-op districts across the South, including some of the same ones that One Voice is now targeting. The campaigns were largely unsuccessful; it was too easy for incumbent boards to adjust the bylaws and election procedures to protect themselves. In some cases, these co-ops were carrying on habits that go back to their origins in the 1930s and 40s, when white residents could expect to see power lines earlier and cheaper than their black neighbors. But One Voice may fare differently. Before the first set of trainings was over, Johnson told me, at least two co-ops appointed their first African-American directors.29

The co-op associations mainly stand aloof from the kind of organizing that One Voice is undertaking. A spokesman for the state association, Electric Cooperatives of Mississippi, told me hed never heard of the campaign. His counterpart at the NRECA merely alluded to the organizations general support for fair elections. Nor have concerns about racial justice unsettled the Rural Utilities Service, whose lending comes with a requirement of nondiscrimination. We have a very low level of complaint to the Office of Civil Rights on issues like this, says Christopher McLean. Even so, the concerns motivating co-op members like Della Brown-Davis are limited neither to Mississippi nor to African Americans. They are symptoms of more widespread neglect.30

Jim Cooper, a Democratic congressman from the Tennessee district that includes Nashville, was raised by a father who helped start an electric co-op where they lived. When Cooper later visited co-ops as a politician, hed make a point of browsing their tax forms, and he noticed some of the same things that Benita Wells did. Id congratulate them for being so wealthy, and theyd look at me like I was crazy, Cooper tells me. This led him into an investigation of what he now calls a massive, nationwide cover-up. He published his findings in a scathing 2008 article in the Harvard Journal on Legislation. In particular, he pointed out the billions of dollars in capital credits that co-ops collectively holdexcess revenues technically owned by members, but that often go unclaimed, serving as a pool of interest-free financing. Policies vary, but some co-ops even prevent members or their families from recouping equity. This can go on for generations. Local co-ops are primarily owned by dead people, Cooper says.31

Coopers article proposed a series of reforms, including more mandatory disclosures to members and the public. He suggested that unless co-ops take on a new New Deal of economic development and environmental conservation, they should not be entitled to never-ending federal support. His essay entered the Congressional Record the year it was published, but the co-op lobby fought back hard, and his proposals didnt get any further than that. When I talk with my colleagues about this, they shut their eyes and close their ears, he says. The NRECA pretty much gets what it wants.32

The see-no-evil stance of the associations has helped inspire a new wave of agitation, of which One Voice is only a part. We Own It, for instance, is a new network started by young but seasoned cooperators determined to support organizing among co-op membersrather than the executives and directors who steer the associations. Theyre connecting activist members at electric co-ops across the country, helping them learn from one another about policies to seek and strategies for winning them. In an online forum, they pass around news about co-op corruption alongside tricks for financing solar power and efficiency improvements.33

Our goal is to build a social movement, says founder Jake Schlachter.34

A movement will take some doing. According to a study by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, nearly three-quarters of co-ops see voter turnout of less than 10 percent in board elections. When I attended a board-candidate forum for an electric co-op near where I live, in Colorado, there were more candidates and staff present than anyone else. Only one of the four seats on the ballot was contested. (Hundreds of members come to the annual meetings, however, which include door prizes, a hearty dinner, live entertainment, and a person in a robot suit.) By way of explanation, a staff member repeated what Ive been told by the leaders of other big co-ops: Low turnout means that members are satisfied.35

The movement makers dont accept that. The most important lesson Ive learned over the years is that the cooperative system is really dependent on member involvement, says Mark Hackett, a We Own It collaborator who was part of a successful organizing effort after a corruption debacle at his co-op in Georgia, Cobb EMC. If the members are not involved in any significant way, the directors become very insular, and they can basically do with the co-op as they please.36

The conditions of managerial capture are not quite so arbitrary. The best and worst co-op managers alike carry on their books and in their habits the weight of decades-long contracts, of old loan conditions, of billion-dollar coal plants. There have been astonishing cases of self-dealing by boards and staff. But co-ops can still serve as vehicles of participatory economics on a vast scale, just as when farmers suspicious of banks and abandoned by capitalists built utilities for themselvesso well that Washington saw fit to give them bank-rate loans. It was a rare bit of development policy designed to actually empower the people it was supposed to help.37

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Murray Lincoln, an early architect of the electric co-op system, recalls in his memoir the nature of the enterprise. Farmers were just itching to have electricity, and to have it from their own cooperative was a dream come true, he wrote. We rushed into the business half-blind, not knowing what it was going to cost us, but knowing that it was something that ought to be done and something that we ought to be doing for ourselves. 38

As the Trump administration assembles its promised trillion-dollar infrastructure plan, it seems unlikely to unleash a fresh spree of cooperative rural development. White House strategist Steve Bannon did, however, offer an ominous tribute to the milieu from which the electric co-ops came. The plan, he said, will be as exciting as the 1930s. Few remember that decade so fondly as the electricity people.39

Continued here:
Economic Democracy and the Billion-Dollar Co-op - The Nation.

We know, as a matter of fact, that centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron won 24 percent of the vote in the first round of the French elections, while the far-right Marine Le Pen won just over 21 percent. He exceeded expectations in the tense runoff, with a resounding defeat of Le Pen, 66 to 34 percent. Two people, however, can look at these same results and come to quite different conclusions. For those who fear the rise of populism, this was a victory for humanitys better angels and a seemingly decisive defeat for Europes populist wave.

But there is a different way of interpreting the results. In the first round, the reactionary, but not necessarily far-right, Francois Fillona pro-Putinist to bootwon 20 percent while the far-left Jean Luc Melenchon came out with 19.6 percent, his best-ever result. When French voters felt free to vote their conscience, the non-centrist candidates, in other words, won 61 percent of the vote to Macrons 24 percent.

Marine Le Pen's Real Victory

Marine Le Pen won around 34 percent in the second round on May 7, slightly less than polls predicted. She lost by a landslide to Macron, but she still won 34 percent in one of the worlds most established democracies, easily her partys best-ever result. Le Pen also happened to be, if anything, a weaker candidate than Donald Trump, who won not in spite of his idiosyncrasies and lack of political experience but because of them. That he was different than the rest was his raison detre. On the campaign trail, Trump, in addition to being vindictive and mean-spirited, could just as easily be charming and funny. Le Pen is none of these things. She is solid. She is a professional politician, and a known political quantity, something that Macron was more than happy to point out in their presidential debate.

Perhaps more importantly, Le Pen suffered from a longtime association with her National Front party, with its history of anti-Semitism, fascism, and its weak spot for Vichy collaboration during World War II. Trump, on the other hand, was able to basically a rent a major center-right partyone of only two that Americans can realistically choose fromfor his own purposes. Oddly enough, it is precisely Americas two-party system, long thought of as a moderating influence, that propelled a president, Donald Trump, who is, at once, the most radical, the most secular, and the most ideologically promiscuous candidate in American history.

The French election results are likely to represent the new normal: populist-nationalists representing the second-largest parties in either presidential or parliamentary elections, rather than merely the third or fourth. This has now been the result in the three most closely watched elections in Europe beginning last December, in Austria, the Netherlands, and now France. Even when populism wins, as it did in the United States, it will not win outright, as evidenced by the stark disagreements among the Trump administrations various factions. But populism doesnt need to win outright to reshape Western democracy. It can still even hover in the low double digits, as long as it is able to influence, or even capture, the larger right. Max Fisher and Amanda Taub of The New York Times write that as Brexit proves, the populist wave can do plenty at 13 percent, referring to the portion of the vote the U.K. Independence Party, or UKIP, won in the most recent elections.

European parliamentary systems make it hard for a single ideological current to dominate, and this is a virtue, as I discussed in a previous post. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Marxist and socialist parties made considerable gains, but eventually reached their natural limit. As Adam Przeworski and John Sprague write in their seminal history of electoral socialism: All growth was arrested as [they] approached 50 percent, almost as if electoral institutions were designed in a way that would prevent any political force from obtaining overwhelming support for any social transformation.

Socialist revolution through the ballot box failed, but the populism of the far right (or of the far left) is something different. Its ideological, without offering an ideology, at least not a coherent one. Its a set of feelings, frustrations, and sentiments. Its a valorization of the people, and the people, whoever they are, will remain. Socialism, as an ideology, is more likely to fail if the socialist program fails, but populism can attract a more diverse group of supporters from left and right, precisely because of its lack of a defined program.

The counter to the populists, whether its Emmanuel Macron in France or Democrats in the United States, have either won already or might soon win, but then what? Across Western democracies, the technocratic liberalism of the center-left has suffered a series of defeats, with establishment parties collapsing in dramatic fashion. The liberal consensuswhich became more about preserving the status quo by tinkering around its margins than about articulating a new visionplainly does not speak to the increasingly visceral, supposedly irrational tenor of modern politics in old and new democracies alike. And this supposed irrationalism, of not recognizing what others say our interests must be, is the way that so many of us, despite our best efforts, feel. (Its not irrational to want to vote in accordance with what you feel viscerally, if for example you feel that immigrants are or, at least can be, a threat to what you perceive your national identity to be. Or, for the more religious, what could be more rational than wanting eternal salvation, if your starting assumption is that paradise exists and that you must please God to be granted it?)

Some like the New York Times columnist Ross Douthat have argued that Emmanuel Macron is a callow creature of a failed consensus. While Macrons vision isnt necessarily clearhow exactly would he be different than other young, center-left post-ideological presidents?what he does stand for matters. Being open to the European Union and to the world and being unapologetic about supporting democratic values abroad are more significant statements of intent today, now that they are under greater threat. Macron may not be an American-style multiculturalist, but he has tried to minimize tensions around Islam, arguing that no religion is a problem in France today. He has hinted at a more permissive interpretation of French secularism, or laicit, saying that too many Frenchmen confuse secularism and the prohibition of religious manifestations. He has also reckoned with Frances past of brutal colonization. So when people criticize Macrons lack of a clear, coherent ideology, they may be right, but for the French Muslims who worry about their future in France, that Macron would be openly more accepting of them is no small matter. For those who worry about whether they can be both French and Muslim, without having to choose, it might as well be everything.

Still, Macron being significantly better than the alternative does not mean Macron solves the problems that have allowed the French far right to inch ever more closely toward Frances permanent mainstream. To truly stem the populist tide in any lasting, meaningful way will require going well beyond what Macron or anyone else of the center-left has so far offered. It is not enough to be better. Macron has often been compared to another post-ideological president, Barack Obama, which might sound encouraging. Except that populist nationalisms greatest victory came to pass after Americans experienced eight years of Obamas once supposedly transformational presidency. That presidency didnt transform politics, at least not in the way his supporters had hoped when they celebrated on November 4, 2008.

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Populists Don't Need to Win to Reshape Western Democracy - The Atlantic

The collapse of Ukip has reinforced Conservative dominance. No wonder they love the current voting system, writes one reader. Photograph: Robert Perry/EPA

Your map (Council control, 6 May) sums up very neatly the basic problem with politics in Britain today.

Contrast the position in Scotland with that in England. North of the border, apart from the islands, where independents dominate, no party has overall control in a single council. Thanks to a sensible voting system for Scottish council elections, all parties are fairly represented and have to work together. In England, the limitations of first-past-the-post are clearly demonstrated by vast areas of one-party control. Yet in very few cases does that party represent more than half of those who voted.

The collapse of Ukip has reinforced Conservative dominance. No wonder the Tories love the current voting system. Nothing is going to change until the Labour party remembers what democracy is really all about and realises that it needs PR just as much as the other, smaller parties. Richard Carden Denton, Norfolk

Though Polly Toynbee offers cogent observations on the vagaries of voting, her prescription runs into an obvious objection encountered (and dodged) by all arguments for compulsory voting (Opinion, 4 May). Compulsion denies the individual freedom of choice, a denial that is at the very least paradoxical, given the democratic principles it seeks to preserve. A much better way to address the democratic crisis of a declining vote would be the inclusion on the ballot paper of a formal option to abstain.Spoiling the ballot paper simply confuses the interpretation of results and robs the individual of the opportunity to register an explicit rejection of the choices on offer. It also inducts the young into making the kind of cheap compromise with unsatisfactory processes that they already find meaningless, if not farcical.

Until proportional representation is taken seriously, formal abstention would at least be advantageous. As abstentions are likely massively to outweigh the number of spoiled papers, politicians would have to take seriously the sheer quantity of voters wholesale rejection of them. It would also provide a much better premise for compelling individuals to surrender their right to ignore a process so evidently rotten and derelict. Paul McGilchrist Colchester, Essex

Forget the polls last weeks elections provided a real-time update of the state of British politics, just five weeks before a general election. For the parties, it was illuminating: the Conservative vote grew, Labour made losses, the Liberal Democrats flatlined and Ukip looks finished.

But if there was one loser, it was democracy. Less than 28% of the electorate turned out to vote in the mayoral elections. In Tees Valley, Conservative Ben Houchen won with just 21% of people turning out. We are still awaiting the final turnout figures for the council elections, but they are unlikely to paint a better picture. Predictions are currently at about 33%.

With turnouts like this, it is laughable for politicians to proclaim that Britain is the home of democracy. Our democracy is on life-support, and action needs to be taken.

There is no simple solution, but we must consider all the options including how to harness the benefits of technology by integrating it into our democratic process. Unveiling the governments Transformation Strategy this year, Ben Gummer, minister for the Cabinet Office, promised to use digital to transform the relationship between the citizen and the state. Reforming the democratic process should play a central part of this. Areeq Chowdhury Chief executive, WebRoots Democracy

Why is no mention made in your front-page report (6 May) of the fact that 40 Green party councillors were elected, including several net gains? I looked in vain for this information in your table headed Councillor net gains. Presumably it was hidden under other. Chris Gooch Teddington, Middlesex

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Local elections point up UK's democratic crisis - The Guardian

WASHINGTON The voters of France acted responsibly and decently on Sunday. But they also sent a warning.

Frances new president-elect is Emmanuel Macron, a 39-year-old centrist whose 2-to-1 victory over the National Fronts Marine Le Pen offered yet another sign that the rise of President Trump is not the harbinger of a new and unhinged form of nationalism. For now, the center is holding, pluralism is hanging on, and the far right is being held in check. As they had in recent elections in Austria and the Netherlands, the friends of liberal democracy prevailed while Trump, who publicly tilted toward Le Pen, suffered another rebuke.

Macron ran as a confident and unflinching advocate of pluralism and openness, and he will become, instantly, a major global voice for those values. But he will have to govern a deeply torn nation in a surly mood. Le Pens share of the vote, while not as high as her supporters had hoped and her detractors had feared, was still a major breakthrough for what had once been a pariah party long dismissed as a neofascist movement rooted in unsavory aspects of French history. Like Trump, Le Pen rallied voters in once prosperous but now ailing industrial towns. Macron swept Frances prospering and cosmopolitan big cities.

The creator of a political party that is only a year old, Macron faces significant challenges reflected in the unusually large number of blank protest ballots. He will have to take on or work around the countrys established parties in Junes legislative elections. He will also have to square the many circles of his neither-left-nor-right campaign platform. He promised both a more flexible regulatory climate for business and solid social protections for a 21st-century economy. Macron is both a former investment banker and a moderate social democrat. Demonstrating how these two sides of him fit together will define the drama of his presidency.

A particular test will be whether he is willing and able to nudge Germany toward a less austere and constraining economic approach to southern Europe. Macrons election could signal a renewed Franco-German alliance. This would be a tonic for the E.U., but only if it becomes the engine for both reform and more widely shared growth. German Chancellor Angela Merkel quickly expressed her pleasure over Macrons victory.

None of this will be easy, and if Macron is unsuccessful and the mainstream French right fails to revive itself, many in France fear that Le Pen (who is only 48 years old) could win the next election five years from now.

Macron was endorsed by former President Barack Obama, and their similarities are striking: youth, a hopeful attitude toward the future, a vaguely progressive spirit of moderation and a well-advertised desire to overcome traditional divides.

Less remarked upon is their shared political luck. When Obama ran for the U.S. Senate in Illinois in 2004 the job that, along with his Democratic National Convention speech that year, propelled him to the national stage two of his strongest rivals were forced out of the running by sex and marital scandals.

Macron would likely not even have made it to Sundays runoff but for the troubles of two key competitors: Franois Fillon, the candidate of the mainstream right, was caught in a scandal involving paid no-show jobs for his family. The more moderate Socialist alternative, former prime minister Manuel Valls, lost his partys primary, opening new room in the political center.

But it took more than luck for the new French president to accomplish something most students of French politics thought impossible: From scratch, he built his own political party of the center, En Marche! Its name can be roughly translated as Onward, though it might best be seen as a compact Gallic version of John F. Kennedys Lets get this country moving again.

While presidents of both the left and the right in France have often pursued moderate policies, the loyalties to political tribes and to the very concept of left vs. right a French invention, after all have typically stranded centrist politicians in a nowhere land.

Macron grasped that the old left/right divide is an increasingly imperfect construct for the new fissures in a Western politics organized around openness, pluralism and a transnational approach on the one side, and nationalism, more closed economies and a rejection of pluralism on the other.

In the 1990s, President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair spoke of creating a Third Way in politics between an old left and a new right. Under far more trying circumstances, Emmanuel Macrons victory gives the Third Way a second chance and liberal democracy a much-needed reprieve.

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Dionne: How Macron's victory gives democracy a reprieve - The Mercury News